Our first inoculation (whether with vaginal or skin microbes) initially operates based on fermentative abilities of the colonizing microbes, setting up a micro-biont social class system that is important for the health of our holobionts. First facultative microbes move in; then obligate anaerobes[1] slide into the functional niches made as the oxygen gets all used … Continue reading
Tag Archives: microbiome
2.1 Homesteading (3)
We talked briefly that certain studies postulate that the current human-microbe relationship began with the dawn of agriculture when humans began to actively shape and structure their external ecosystem[i]. So a relationship began that has continued for thousands of years: we are born, inoculated, and select[1] for the microbes that will make our human holobiont … Continue reading
Biological Stories
You are a story. Not you have a story, or tell stories, or even live a story. You are a story. The very body that you live in imanifests a story spelled out by the language of life: our DNA (and in some cases RNA). This story is then told by our cells, both microbial … Continue reading
2.1 Homesteading (2)
Tolerization of the GALT to microbes in the gut is an ongoing, dynamic process. Every individual is exposed to different microbes at different times. However, just as when early man laid down the first irrigation canals that would change the landscape of the Fertile Crescent forever, the first few years of our lives are possibly … Continue reading
2.1 Homesteading (1)
We discussed in the previous chapter that the gut has a cellular wall around it composed of human epithelial cells as well as the fluid mucus layer. Both act as a physical barrier; however, our mucus provides a sort of no-man’s-land where phages wait for prey and microbes establish their niche. The mucus that lines … Continue reading
2.0 THIS SHIT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE (3)
A solitary bacterium triggers the innate immune response in various ways. It can shed microbial elements such as lipopolysaccharides (LPS—sugar chains that dangle from bacterial cell walls) that act as MAMPs. Or it can be ingested by a dendritic cell that is feeling through the mucus layer for anything that is foreign[1]—to name two. Bacteria … Continue reading
2.0 THIS SHIT CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE (2)
With constant mucus flow, changing nutrient availability, and other ecosystem stressors, our internal bionts have to quickly respond to constant flux. Microbes thrive in the gut in part because they are communal organisms. In the initial colonization of the intestines, intrepid microbes looked out on the turbulent yet nutrient-rich landscape and declared it good. They … Continue reading
